Journal of Applied Linguistics and Language Research
Volume 4, Issue 2, 2017, pp. 267-276
Available online at www.jallr.com
ISSN: 2376-760X
Advanced EFL Learners' Knowledge of Different Collocation
Types
Fahimeh Talakoob
MA, Department of English, Isfahan (Khorasgan) Branch, Islamic Azad University, Isfahan, Iran
Mansour Koosha *
Associate Professor, Department of English, Isfahan (Khorasgan) Branch, Islamic Azad University, Isfahan, Iran
Abstract
In order to be able to use language efficiently, L2 learners need to improve their knowledge of
collocations. Collocational competence can lead to vocabulary knowledge and hence to
language proficiency. The present paper intended to investigate whether Iranian advanced EFL
learners’ knowledge of collocation differed in terms of the type of collocations including verbnoun (VN), verb-preposition (VP) and adjective-noun (AN) collocations or not. In so doing,
from among the available MA students of TEFL studying at Islamic Azad University, Isfahan
(Khorasgan) branch, 50 were selected through an Oxford Placement Test (OPT). Three tests
of collocations including a test of VN collocations, a test of AN collocations, and a test of VP
collocations, were derived from the Oxford Collocation Dictionary (2002), and the Cambridge
English Collocations in Use (2005), and they were administered to the participants. The results
of one-way ANOVA and a post-hoc Scheffe test revealed that the advanced learners’ scores
on the VN and VP collocation tests were significantly higher than their scores on the AN
collocation test. This finding bears a number of implications, which are elaborated on in the
paper.
Keywords: vocabulary knowledge, collocational competence, grammatical collocations,
lexical collocations, advanced EFL learners
INTRODUCTION
With the change of focus from teacher-centeredness to learner and learning-centered
approaches to language learning and teaching, researchers highlighted the role of EFL
vocabulary acquisition and commended vocabulary treatment in classroom practices
(Nation, 1990). This Change of direction was also true for a change from grammar to
vocabulary. Still, knowledge of collocation which is considered fundamental to vocabulary
acquisition seems to be underestimated in EFL syllabus design.
Collocations, which are a type of assembled chunks, are very important for teachers and
learners to be taken into account in the process of language learning (Thornbury, 2002).
* Correspondence: Mansour Koosha, Email: mansour.koosha yahoo.com
© 2017 Journal of Applied Linguistics and Language Research
Advanced EFL Learners' Knowledge of Different Collocation Types
268
Collocations are usually described as the words that are located together in predictable
patterns in speech and writing. Benson, Benson and Ilson (1997) classified collocations
into two main types: grammatical collocations (for example, by chance) and lexical
collocations (for example, valuable asset). This classification contains eight main types of
grammatical collocations and seven types of lexical collocations. These two classes of
collocations represent two distinct but related aspects of collocations as they include both
lexis and grammar. According to Benson et al., (1997), a grammatical collocation consists
of a grouping of a dominant word (verb, noun, adjective) and a grammatical word (e.g.
preposition), like make up (verb and preposition), concerned about (adjective and
preposition), and a choice between (noun and preposition). Grammatical collocations
include eight types of collocations which are presented in Table 1:
Table 1. Grammatical Collocations
Collocation
Example
Noun + preposition
Exception to
Noun + to-infinitive
A decision to do that
Noun+ that clause
He made a promise that he would do his best
Preposition + noun
By chance
Adjective +preposition
Keen on movies
Adjective +to-infinitive
It's essential to type the letter
Adjective +that-clause
It was necessary that all of us attend
Verb+ to infinitive
They started to work
(Adopted from Shamsudin, Sadoughvanini & Hanafi Zaid, 2013)
Contrary to grammatical collocations, lexical collocations do not include function words
like prepositions or infinitives, but lexical collocations consist of content words like
nouns, adjectives, verbs, and adverbs. According to Benson et al. (1997), lexical
collocations can be classified into six types namely, verb plus noun or adverb, noun plus
verb or noun, adverb plus adjective, and adjective plus noun as shown in Table 2:
Table 2. Lexical Collocations
Collocation
Example
Verb + noun
kick the ball, make a sandwich
Verb + adverb
Recommend highly, move slowly
Noun + verb
cars crash., Bee stings
Noun +noun
a school of fish
Adverb + adjective Drastically changed, closely related
Adjective + noun
Thick fog, terrible mistake
(Adopted from Shamsudin, Sadoughvanini & Hanafi Zaid, 2013)
In general, the lexical oriented and grammar oriented traditions about collocations seem
to have their benefits, and the issue is not a matter of which traditions is higher. In
comparison with grammar oriented tradition, in lexical oriented tradition the need to
master many collocations is emphasized. However, being aware of both views about
collocations let us know the complexity of the nature of the collocations and also the
potential difficulty in learning collocations for EFL learners.
Journal of Applied Linguistics and Language Research, 2017, 4(2)
269
In addition to the classification of collocations by Benson et al. (1997), other researchers
classified collocations into different types from various perspectives. Cowie, Mackin and
MaCCaig (1983), the compilers of Oxford Dictionary of Current Idiomatic English, classified
collocations into two groups according to idiomaticity namely, restricted collocations, and
open collocations. Restricted collocations are collocations that have one element used in a
non-literal sense and the other used in its normal meaning, like, under a shadow, while
open collocations involve elements which are freely combinable and each element has its
literal sense such as a mad dog.
Lewis (2000) stated that "the type which names a concept, usually verb + noun (move
house) or verb + adjective + noun (take the wrong turn)" (p. 116) is the most important
collocation type. Lewis further believed that the typical lexical collocations consist of
nouns, adjectives, verbs, and adverbs. As Hill (2003) emphasizes, "It is the noun which
carries most content and it is the noun which is at the center of most collocations" (p. 51).
Yet, in another classification, Lewis (1997a) used the criteria of fixedness and
restrictedness to classify collocations into strong and weak collocations. Strong
collocations are known as closely linked phrases that usually act like single words. On the
contrary, weak collocations, such as a nice day and a good play, are groupings of two
ordinary words, and each of them may combine with many other words.
The present study intended to investigate three subcategories of grammatical and lexical
collocations, namely, verb-noun (VN), adjective-noun (AN), and verb-preposition (VP)
among advanced Iranian EFL learners. So far, some other studies of collocation among
EFL learners have considered only one of the two types of collocations or even one of the
subcategories. For example, Koosha and Jafarpour (2006) investigated knowledge of only
prepositional collocations in Iranian EFL learners. Furthermore, Tim Hsu and Chiu (2008)
investigated the relation of the knowledge and use of only English lexical collocations of
Taiwanese EFL learner spoken discourse. Therefore, it seems that comparing the
categories of VN, AN, and VP among advanced EFL have evaded from the eyes of
researchers in the Iranian EFL context.
LITERATURE REVIEW
In this section, some previous studies on collocations are presented. Mahmoud (2005)
investigated the collocation written errors which Arab learners of English committed
when practicing collocation use. Descriptive statistics revealed that about 64% of
collocations used were wrong and 80% of these were lexical collocations compared with
grammatical ones. He also noted that 61% of the incorrect combinations could be
attributed to negative transfer from Arabic.
In another study, Hsu (2010) sought to find out if direct collocation instruction influenced
EFL learners' reading comprehension and vocabulary learning. Based on three academic
levels, three groups of Taiwanese college English majors participated in the study. They
were exposed to three kinds of treatment: single-item vocabulary instruction, lexical
collocation instruction, and no treatment. Afterwards, the participants took a reading
comprehension test and 3 vocabulary recall tests. The results, analyzed quantitatively,
Advanced EFL Learners' Knowledge of Different Collocation Types
270
revealed that the lexical collocation instruction had a positive effect on the learners'
vocabulary gain more than their reading comprehension across all three academic levels.
Bagherzadeh Hosseini and Akbarian (2007) investigated the relationship between
collocational competence and general language proficiency and examined the gotogetherness of quantitative and qualitative characteristics of lexical proficiency. The
results indicated that there was a relationship between the collocation test and TOEFL
and between the vocabulary section of TOEFL and the collocation test. Moreover,
subjects' qualitative proficiency went with their quantitative proficiency. It can be
concluded that collocations had to be taught at the right time through explicit teaching to
make students aware of collocations.
In another study on collocations, Keshavarz and Salimi (2007) employed open-ended,
multiple-choice cloze tests, and TOEFL to measure collocational competence and
language proficiency of one hundred Iranian students. A TOEFL test evaluated the
subjects' language proficiency and a fifty item test comprising lexical and grammatical
collocations examined their collocational proficiency. They found out that there existed a
significant relationship between performance on cloze tests and collocational
competence. The results also showed that collocational competence was very important
to increase language proficiency of Iranian EFL learners in the target language.
In another study, Ghonsooli, Pishghadam, and Mohaghegh Mahjoobi (2008) investigated
the effect of teaching collocations on Iranian EFL learners' English writing. They
employed quantitative and qualitative methods in two stages, a product phase and a
process phase. To this end, thirty subjects from the English Department of the College of
Ferdowsi University in Iran were selected. They were taught their course materials in
twenty-one sessions. The experimental group learners were seventeen students to whom
collocations were taught by different techniques. However, the control group was taught
through the conventional slot and filter approach. The results showed that the
experimental group had a higher mean score in their collocation test and English Writing
Test at the product stage because of collocation teaching. Their mean scores for different
writing sections demonstrated that subjects’ vocabulary and fluency increased
considerably as a result of collocation teaching at the process stage.
Sadeghi (2009) studied the collocational differences between L1 and L2 and its
implications for EFL learners and teachers. His study was different from Ghonsooli,
Pishghadam, and Mohaghegh Mahjoobi's (2008) study since he compared collocations
between Persian and English. There were seventy-six students who participated in a sixty
item Persian and English Test of Collocations. The results showed students might have a
lot of problems in using collocations where they negatively transferred their linguistic
proficiency of Persian to English.
Shokouhi and Mirsalari (2010) also investigated the relationship between collocational
proficiency and general linguistic proficiency among EFL learners. There were thirty-five
subjects who were chosen by a proficiency test and were administered a 90-item
multiple-choice test which had lexical collocations of noun-noun, noun-verb, and
Journal of Applied Linguistics and Language Research, 2017, 4(2)
271
adjective-noun, and grammatical collocations of noun-preposition, and preposition-noun.
The results showed no significant correlation between the general linguistic proficiency
and collocational proficiency of EFL learners, and lexical collocations were found to be
easier than grammatical collocations for the students and from among all subcategories,
noun-preposition was the most difficult and noun-verb was the easiest.
In another study, Bazzaz and Samad (2011) discussed the relationship between
collocational proficiency and the use of verb-noun collocations in writing stories since
collocational proficiency differentiates native speakers and foreign or second language
learners and is a major issue in productive skills especially writing. To this end, twentyseven Iranian PhD students in a Malaysian university were selected. The students’
proficiency was measured by a specially constructed C-Test and the use of collocations
was calculated by the number of collocations that was used by the students in their
essays. To reach this end, students wrote six different stories in six weeks based on a
written task in which verb-noun collocations were elicited. The results indicated that
there was a large positive relationship between proficiency of collocations and the use of
verb-noun collocations in the stories.
Bahardoust (2012) investigated the rate of lexical collocations in Iranian EFL learners'
writing production between L1 and L2, and the influence of L1 on L2 collocational use. To
reach this aim, two-hundred subjects were chosen. The results showed that the rates of
verb-noun and adjective-noun were the highest, and the rate of noun-verb was the
lowest. The rate and the frequency of collocations were compared in L1 and L2
paragraphs. The results revealed that L1 collocations had a higher rate and frequency
than L2 collocations, and L1 produced both positive and negative influence on
collocations.
As mentioned earlier, various studies have been conducted with regards to knowledge of
collocations. Yet, to the best of the researchers’ knowledge, no study has so far compared
different types of collocations among Iranian advanced EFL learners. Accordingly, in
order to fill this gap, the present paper intended to investigate if there is a significant
difference between the Persian-speaking advanced EFL learners' performance on the
verb-noun, adjective-noun, and verb-preposition collocation tests. In fact, the following
research question was intended to be answered in the present paper: Is there a
significant difference between the Persian-speaking advanced EFL learners' performance
on the verb-noun, adjective-noun, and verb-preposition collocation tests?
METHOD
Participants
This investigation was conducted at Islamic Azad University, Isfahan (Khorasgan) branch.
From among 100 available MA students, 50 were selected according to their performance
Advanced EFL Learners' Knowledge of Different Collocation Types
272
on the Oxford Placement Test (OPT). These participants included both male and female
EFL learners, and ranged in age from 22 to 41. Convenience sampling procedure was used
to choose the participants of this study.
Instruments
An Oxford Placement Test (OPT) and three tests of collocations were employed in the
present study. The three tests of collocations included a test of verb-noun collocations (n
= 50), a test of adjective-noun collocations (n = 50), and a test of verb-preposition
collocations (n = 50). The tests were comprised of multiple-choice and fill-in-the-blank
items. The test items were derived from the Oxford Collocation Dictionary (2002), and the
Cambridge English Collocation in Use (2005). For the sake of validity, these tests were
proofread by three TEFL experts and some minor changes were made accordingly.
Furthermore, in order to test the reliability of these tests, they were piloted on 15 nonparticipant advanced EFL learners. The alpha Cronbach indices for the three tests were
found to be .84, .89, and .81 respectively.
Procedures
At the onset of the study, out of 100 MA students of English studying at Islamic Azad
University, Isfahan (Khorasgan) branch, 50 who were found to be homogeneous
advanced EFL learners were chosen through an Oxford Placement test (OPT). The
participants were informed about the procedures and then three tests of collocation were
run at three consequent sessions each lasting for 40 minutes. Finally, the results were
compared using the one-way ANOVA in SPSS. The following section present the obtained
results.
RESULTS
The gained results of the three tests were compared via one-way repeated-measures
ANOVA. The results are presented in the following tables.
Table 3. Descriptive Statistics of the Results
Verb-noun
Verbpreposition
Adjective-noun
Total
N
Mean Std. Deviation
50
42.76
5.12
Std.
Error
1.57
50
43.00
6.05
1.42
50
150
37.66
41.14
4.52
5.23
1.62
.95
According to the results presented in Table 3, the mean scores of the participants in verbnoun (VN) test of collocation was 42.76, their mean score in verb-preposition (VP) test
was 43.00, and the mean score in adjective-noun (AN) test was 37.66. Figure 1 compares
the results graphically:
Journal of Applied Linguistics and Language Research, 2017, 4(2)
44
43
42.76
43
273
42
41
40
39
37.66
38
37
36
35
34
VN
VP
AN
Figure 1. Comparison of VN, VP and AN Collocation Test Scores
As is shown above, the mean difference among the three collocation tests is evident with
the participants' mean score in the test of VP being higher than the tests of VN and AN;
however, in order to be more objective, one can consult the Sig. column in Table 4 (oneway repeated-measures ANOVA table):
Table 4. Results of One-Way ANOVA on the Three Collocation Tests
Value
.57
Pillai's Trace
.42
Wilks' Lambda
Hotelling's Trace 1.34
Roy's Largest Root 1.34
F Hypothesis df
32.31
2.00
32.31
2.00
32.31
2.00
32.31
2.00
Error df
48.00
48.00
48.00
48.00
Sig. Partial Eta Squared
.000
.57
.000
.57
.000
.57
.000
.57
In Table 4., the p value under the Sig. column in front of Wilk’s Lambda turned out to be
smaller than the significance level (.000 < .05), which means that the differences among
the VN, AN, and NP test of collocations taken by advanced EFL learners were statistically
significant. However, to identify the difference between which pairs of scores was of
statistical significance, one needs to look down the Sig. column in front of pairwise
comparisons in the post hoc test table (Table 5):
Table 5. Post Hoc Test Results
Collocations Mean Difference Std. Error Sig.
VN
AN
VP
AN
VP
VN
VP
VN
AN
5.10*
-.24
-5.10*
-5.34*
.24
5.34*
.29
.33
.29
.31
.33
.31
.000
.059
.000
.000
.059
.000
95% Confidence Interval for Difference
Lower Bound
Upper Bound
1.59
3.04
-.02
1.62
-3.04
-1.59
-2.30
-.73
-1.60
.02
.73
2.30
The difference between VN (M = 42.76) and AN (M = 37.66) scores reached statistical
significance since the Sig. value in front of this pairwise comparison was less than the
significance level (.000 < .05). However, the difference between VN and VP (M = 43.00)
failed to reach statistical significance. Finally, AN and VP test scores were significantly
Advanced EFL Learners' Knowledge of Different Collocation Types
274
different from one another. This leads to the conclusion that for advanced learners, taking
VN and VP tests was far easier than taking the AN test, and that there was not a significant
difference between the VN and VP tests for them.
DISCUSSION
The present paper intended to investigate if Iranian advanced EFL learners performed
similarly or differently on tests of collocations in three different types of verb-preposition
(VP), verb-noun (VN) and adjective-noun (AN). The results of the gathered data revealed
that the participants significantly performed better on both VN and VP tests compared
with AN collocation test.
The findings may be due to the fact that verbs and nouns play a more central position in
the sentence than adjectives. In addition, verbs and nous are the main constituents of
sentence. English sentences must have main verbs, but they may not necessarily include
adjectives. This is in fact in line with the frequency hypothesis which states that the order
of development in L2 acquisition is determined by the frequency with which different
linguistic items occur in the input. The verb-noun and verb-preposition collocations are
more common in the oral and written input which is presented to EFL learners. This
finding is in line with some previous research in the field of collocations like the study by
El-Dakhs (2015). The results of the present study also lend support to the study by
Miqdad (2012) who showed that verb + noun collocations were easier for EFL learners
than adjective + noun collocations and verb + preposition collocations.
Another explanation for the findings of the present study may be the fact that as EFL
learners improve their general proficiency, their breath of vocabulary improves more
than the depth. To put it differently, the participants in the present study, who were
advanced EFL learners, had acquired a great number of English vocabularies that were
semantically similar, but they had not learned the lexical limitations on the use of these
words. The results may have the implications that teaching individual vocabulary items
does not guarantee efficient language use. Learners should learn frequent word
combinations as pre-fabricated, ready-made chunks to improve their language use.
CONCLUSION
As it was pointed out above, the motive behind the present study was that researchers, to
date, in the EFL context of Iran had not compared advanced EFL learners’ knowledge of
different types of collocations, and this was why the present study was undertaken. The
results obtained through the analysis of the data indicated that the advanced EFL
learners’ performance did not significantly differ on VN and VP collocation tests, yet their
performances on these two tests were significantly superior to their performance on the
AN test. This finding could lead to insights in the way through which collocations are
acquired by EFL learners. It is certainly correct that, as it went above, adjectives are not
as central as nouns and verbs in the structure of a sentence, but acquiring and using them
properly make the learners’ written/spoken productions more assertive. That is why, it
could be recommended to language teachers and materials developers to put special
Journal of Applied Linguistics and Language Research, 2017, 4(2)
275
emphasis on the teaching of AN collocations as they might be a hard nut for (even
advanced) EFL learners to crack.
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